


the path to falling asleep

by sunsetveins



Series: unfinished works [3]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst, Insomnia, M/M, Pete Wentz's Suicide Attempt (Best Buy Incident), and the lead up to the fall out boy hiatus, basically pete dealing with the panic split, it's referenced quite a bit, this is nowhere near complete
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 14:16:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8492959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetveins/pseuds/sunsetveins
Summary: The image of Patrick that Pete has burned into his memory still looks like this Patrick, except this Patrick is sharper and defined in ways that memory Patrick is not. He’s changing and Pete has been through so much change recently that he’s not sure if he can handle it. He’s not sure if he can handle Patrick changing especially, because he was supposed to be the one thing that never did.or the one where Pete can't sleep because he can't stop thinking about Ryan Ross and how thin Patrick is becoming.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not complete, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Week 1, Day 1

 

Pete has been awake for 24 hours. It’s normal for him, and nowhere near his record, but he’s been really trying since that night. He remembers the look on Patrick’s face too vividly to want it back. He swore to himself that he would do better, be better. 

He’d like to think that it’s his own fault that he can’t fall asleep, that maybe he’s drank too much caffeine or had too much sugar. It isn’t, though, and that’s part of what makes him so angry. It’s nothing that he’s done on his own, it’s a chemical imbalance. It’s something in his brain that just isn’t right, not anymore. Maybe it wasn’t ever right. 

What keeps him awake isn’t something he can just take away, or that anyone really can. He’s been on medication for as long as he can remember, but it stopped working when he turned 12 and nothing has helped since. His mind is broken - and why shouldn’t it be? It’s on more than it’s supposed be, so the rational thing to assume is that parts of it has been fried over the years. He’ll never be okay, never be able to fall asleep every night.

It’s a burden, and oh how he so wishes that it was a burden on just him and no one else. But, no matter how hard he’s tried, people have grown to like him, and – dare he say – care about him. It’s a burden on them. He is a burden on them.

Which, admittedly, sounds as if he considers himself to be of great importance in other people’s lives. That’s not what he means at all. His presence is burden enough, but his sickness? That’s something even greater that no one in the world – and especially not Patrick – should have to deal with. 

Insomnia, that’s what they call it. It’s kind of like sleep deprivation, but on speed. Pete has a master’s degree in it.

His parents once told him that, as a baby, he would lie awake for days on end. He wouldn’t ever cry, just lay there and stare at the ceiling, or the wall, or someone in the room. He always looked like he was thinking, contemplating the world. They told him that what the doctors called insomnia, they called brilliance. A mind at work is a thing of brilliance, never a sickness.

They believed in him, believed that his constant state of wakefulness was a sign of something much greater than anyone could possibly imagine. Before Pete realized the truth about existence, he said that God just wanted to have someone to talk to at all hours of the day.

No matter what it was, a sign of greatness or a divine reasoning, insomnia was the worst part of Pete’s continued state of existence. He knew something greater than nightmares, greater than any terror. He knew no escape from the trials of life. 

Normally, when he felt alone and knew that sleep wasn’t going to be stopping by for a visit anytime soon, he would call Ryan. But Ryan is gone now – has been gone for so very, _very_ long – and the thought of calling him makes Pete sick to his stomach in a way that he hasn’t been since he thought _“oh my god, I’m going to die”_ the night that he so desperately wishes he could erase from history. Ryan can’t help him anymore. No, not now. Not when the thought of him is part of what keeps Pete’s brain awake, constantly running through the why, how, when, what if of the situation. 

It isn’t just Ryan that plagues him, either. It’s Brendon and Spencer and Jon and the way Bren’s mouth trembles around certain words, the way Spencer can’t stand on two feet when the lights are off, the way Jon hasn’t called or texted or emailed or said a word. He is haunted by Ryan and his mistakes and the ghosts he’s left behind in place of the people that Pete loves. 

The blame isn’t totally Ryan’s for Pete’s current problem, but he’s a large part of it. Him and the chemicals. But there are other things that Pete can’t breathe around, things that feel like they’ve rooted themselves so deep inside that Pete’s lungs have had to adjust to allow any air passage at all. Things like Patrick’s ever thinning waist, Gabe’s ramblings about Bill, Gerard’s hard gaze sinking through his skin like razor blades. It all weighs so heavily on his mind and there are a million other problems, problems that shouldn’t even be problems, that Pete could list that prevent his mind from turning off, but paying them any mind would defeat the intended purpose of everything he’s going through.

He’d like to say that he’s tossing and turning and trying to sleep, but that would be a lie.

The truth is that he’s sitting on the floor of the hallway outside his hotel room, turning his phone over again and again in his hand, screen open to Ryan’s name, because Pete is pathetic. 

Patrick is asleep in the room next to his, Joe and Andy being somewhere down the hall in room numbers Pete didn’t care to catch when they were given their keys. Pete should be in his room, should at least be trying, or he should’ve gone somewhere other than this hallway floor, but the truth is that Pete is pathetic and selfish and he’s kind of – really is – hoping that Patrick will wander out of his room and catch him. He’s hoping that the sixth sense Patrick seems to have for when Pete needs him will lead Patrick to where Pete is. Yes, he knows he’s awful. He knows he’s as pathetic as they come, as needy and selfish and destructive as Patrick has told him he is, but these facts don’t change a thing. They don’t change that Pete is sitting in the floor, juggling Ryan’s name in his hands, and waiting for someone to remind him that he can’t call.

The reminder comes around 5:30 in the morning, when Pete has been sitting there for at least 4 hours and his phone is nearly dead anyway.

Patrick stumbles out of his room with his hands rubbing at his eyes. He doesn’t close his door and sits beside of Pete without looking at him once.

“How many hours?” Patrick mumbles in question, resting his left hand on Pete’s thigh.

“What time is it?” 

Patrick doesn’t point out the phone in Pete’s hands. Instead, he pulls out his own and tells him that it’s 5:37.

“About 28 or 29, then,” Pete answers, taking Patrick’s left hand in his right. He squeezes in an attempt to be reassuring, but Patrick just sighs and squeezes back, thumb rubbing up and down Pete’s own.

“You didn’t call,” Patrick says. It isn’t a question. Pete never does.

“No,” Pete agrees, “I didn’t.”

“You wanted to.”

“I did. I always do.”

“So does Brendon,” Patrick says, like he’s saying something that he hasn’t before. It isn’t true, but Patrick says it like that every time. Maybe it’s to remind Pete that he isn’t alone, or maybe it’s just to remind him that Ryan was real. Either way, Pete is grateful for it.

“I know,” he says.

They lapse into a silence, still holding hands and staring at the opposite wall. Pete’s phone is still open to Ryan’s name in his other hand.

Patrick’s fingers are thinner than they were the last time Pete held his hand. The thought tugs at his mind, but he doesn’t bring it up. He’s afraid of what might happen if he does.

“He needs you,” is what Patrick says to break the silence ten minutes later.

“I don’t know what to do about that.”

Pete knows that Brendon needs him. He knows that Brendon is just a kid and his heart has always been too big, too open and vulnerable. Oh god, he knows. He knows that Brendon is falling and Spencer isn’t catching him like everyone selfishly figured he would. But he doesn’t know how to help Brendon when he can’t even help himself. He doesn’t know how to fill a hole in the kid’s heart when his own is torn open and gaping, too. Maybe not like Brendon’s, maybe not as jagged and massive because everyone and their grandmother knew that the kid was in love with Ryan, thought he hung the moon – was the moon, even. And everyone knew, too, that Ryan thought the same. Ryan looked at Brendon like he was brighter than the sun and Brendon looked at Ryan like he was the entire night sky. They were in love and – fuck. Pete doesn’t know where it all went wrong. He doesn’t know how to fix it.

He can’t even fix the way Patrick looks at him after shows – like he knows something that Pete doesn’t yet – so how is he supposed to fix Brendon? How is he supposed to help him through this when he can’t even dial Ryan’s number, or work up the nerve to delete it?

“You will,” is all Patrick says.

Pete knows that Patrick doesn’t like to lie to him, but he thinks that he just did.

Instead of responding to that, he asks, “Can I lay down with you?”

Patrick’s face goes soft in the same way it always does when Pete works his way up to asking, and then he nods and stands, pulling Pete with him as he goes.

 

-

 

Thirty minutes later, Patrick is snoring lightly and Pete can’t look away from his face.

It’s getting thinner and thinner each day, smoothing in places that Pete used to poke and pinch and draw patterns. It’s still Patrick. His skin is still pale and his lips are still full and pink. The image of Patrick that Pete has burned into his memory still looks like this Patrick, except this Patrick is sharper and defined in ways that memory Patrick is not. He’s changing and Pete has been through so much change recently that he’s not sure if he can handle it. He’s not sure if he can handle Patrick changing especially, because he was supposed to be the one thing that never did.

Pete doesn’t sleep, still. He stares at Patrick’s face for at least an hour, memorizing this Patrick and how his face has changed in comparison to the one Pete remembers. He catalogs everything in his brain and stores it away for later, and then he lays back and takes one last glance at Ryan’s name and the stupid contact picture that he hasn’t removed either before his phone goes dead.

Once it does, he smooths the hair back that has fallen in front of Patrick’s eyes before he gets up and leaves to his own room until they’re supposed to be awake.

 

-

 

Week 1, Day 2

 

He tells Patrick that he was able to sleep. That once he went back to his room, he just drifted into a calming nothingness and that he was okay now, he was going to be alright – “You worry too much, ‘Trick.”

He had actually stared at the hotel ceiling until his eyes burned, and then he’d found a piece of paper and set to work. Nothing had come of it, broken pieces of separate ideas were scribbled into existence but none of them made enough sense – or maybe he just hadn’t wanted them to. 

_(“I need your broken promises”)_

_(“If I spilled my guts/the world would never look at you the same way”)_

_(“You are a brick tied to me that's dragging me down”)_

_(“I just don't know where it went wrong”)_

_(“And I just need enough of you to dull the pain”)_

He hadn’t gotten rid of them. Despite all of the necessary parts being lost somewhere in his head, something told him to keep the fragments. He slipped them somewhere in his bag, possibly in a side pocket or maybe between a pair of his jeans. He’d revisit them sometime.

He waited ten minutes past call time to leave his room. Maybe for the illusion, or maybe so he could grab onto Patrick’s wrist as he passed him. He wasn’t sure which.


End file.
